Utilizing a mobile device app to control another device has become commonplace. Indeed, build a new home theater with the right equipment, and it's fairly easy for an iPod to provide more funtionality controlling the equipment than a remote control. In the last couple of years, we have also seen networks and streaming services explore how to tap into mobile devices as supplementary second screens, extending the experience and encouraging viewership. Netflix sounds like they might be looking to mash these two ideas up by using the second screen to control the service across multiple devices. The basic idea would be to allow users to engage in their browsing and searching from their mobile device, a task for which the devices are generally better suited than the 10-foot interface apps deployed for Smart TVs and settop boxes, and also control playback on the television from the mobile device. The Smart TV or settop box would still be doing the heavy lifting of streaming, unlike a system such as AirPlay where the mobile device is pushing the content to another device, but it would instead bring all of the discovery and remote control functionality into one place on the user's mobile device. 

Netflix is getting ready to let users control the playback on their TV with their mobile phones. The company recently added support for such AirPlay-like features to the PS3, and is now looking to extend support to a number of other connected devices.

GigaOm

There was a time when I would bounce from one media center frontend application to the next, always seeking out the perfect blend of eye-candy, customizability and functionality. One application that continues to find its way to my test system is MediaPortal. The MediaPortal team has been fairly quiet the last several months, but they recently broke cover with a collection of updates. First up, there is a new default skin. MediaPortal 1.3 is still in beta, but one of the more significant features is a new skinning engine. MediaPortal has traditionally started out with a rather crusty XP-era WMC style skin. The new skin is more reminiscent of an Aeon-style skin for XBMC. In other words, it's looking sharp. The team also gave an update on the long in gestation MediaPortal 2. MediaPortal 2 is still quite definitely alpha software, but the intrepid can look forward to the release of the MP2 Autumn Build in the near future.

Finally, because sometimes I enjoy burying the lead, the MediaPortal team has introduced support for CableCARD. The team is being quite up-front that there is no chance of MediaPortal receiving CableLabs certification, so MediaPortal will only be able to provide access to non-DRM channels and "Copy Freely" content, but it is certainly welcome news for Windows-based HTPC owners still pining for the loss of SageTV and looking for an alternative to WMC. The team is also being quite up-front that MediaPortal's CableCARD support is a work in progress and they are looking for testers to help provide feedback for continued development.

Well howdy, folks! We here at MediaPortal have been getting quite a lot of feedback from everyone, and have found that 3 questions keep being asked:

1. Why not a new default skin for MP? The old one is a bit outdated and you have some awesome skinners on the team.
2. Why is getting your non DRM digital cable content into MediaPortal so hard? Specially if you live in the U.S. as Set-Top-Boxes make it even harder.
3. What is the hype with MP2? Why is better? What is it going to look like?

MediaPortal Blog

The Simple.TV was undoubtedly one of the more intriguing DVR devices to be announced this year. It may have taken awhile, but the Simple.TV is now shipping. Kickstarter pre-orders are receiving the first units, with standard pre-orders coming up next. Like Aereo and the now official Boxee TV, Simple.TV provides DVR capablilites for over-the-air broadcasts and ClearQAM cable channels, with a healthy dose of multi-device streaming tossed in. Attach the Simple.TV to your home network and your antenna or cable jack, and it will stream live TV to an HTML5 enabled browser or Roku box. To turn the Simple.TV into a DVR, simply add some external storage via the USB port. Chip in $50 for a year of the Premier service, or $149 for the lifetime package, and you also get EPG data, expanded recording capablilities, and streaming over the Internet for up to five devices. It sounds like there are still some rough edges to work out, including some issues with the Roku channel and a restriction of one Simple.TV per account, but there is also alot of potential here for those with basic TV needs who desire a DVR.

On Monday, the Simple.TV DVR streamer began shipping. The device differs from other DVRs on the market because it doesn’t actually connect to a TV. Instead, it connects to over-the-air HDTV signals or cable TV and streams the content to iOS devices, HTML-enabled browsers and Roku boxes.

Wired

Images of the Boxee TV leaked last week, along with some early details about what to expect from the Boxee Box successor, but the Boxee TV is now official. As anticipated, the Boxee TV sports two TV tuners that finally add the DVR capabilities that everyone thought the Boxee Live TV would add to the Boxee Box, but the new DVR functionality probably won't be what most people were expecting. The Boxee TV does not come with internal storage for recordings, and though there are two USB ports, external storage is only for local media playback. The Boxee TV will save your recordings to the cloud instead. The cloud-based DVR will cost $15 a month and will be gradually rolled out, starting with 7 major markets at launch and then to other markets based on demand.

The Boxee TV will be a major departure from the Boxee Box, and not just because of the inclusion of DVR functionality. The new device eschews the distinctive cube/pyramid stylings of the original in favor of more traditional rectangular settop box dimensions. The monthly fee is only required for those interested in the cloud DVR; everyone else will appreciate the significantly reduced $99 price tag. Unfortunately, also reduced will be the number of apps available on the Boxee TV. The wide range of apps for accessing online content sources was a distinctive feature of the Boxee software and Boxee Box, but the Boxee TV will only ship a handful of apps for major services such as Netflix, Pandora, and YouTube. The Boxee TV also will not support as wide a range of file types and containers as the Boxee Box for local media playback. Finally, the once-innovative remote control with a QWERTY keyboard on the flip side has been retired in favor of a more traditional remote control.

I suspect the Boxee TV is going to be a tough sell. The $15 dollar monthly fee for the DVR is going to be a tough sell, and heaven forbid you have an ISP with bandwidth limits. Every gigabyte of recorded TV will take 2 gigabytes of your allotted bandwidth; one to go upstream and one to go downstream. Remove the DVR, and the Boxee TV is a less capable iteration of the Boxee Box, and there will be no fleeing to the Boxee Box as it has been discontinued and Boxee is stating that it will not receive anything more than maintenance updates, a prosepct most will find laughable given the abysmal level of support the Boxee Box has received over the last year. Without the launch of the Boxee Live TV, it is unlikely there would have been any updates to the Boxee Box in 2012, an update that dropped in March and came with several major, unresolved issues. It should be interesting to see how long D-Link will give the Boxee team to show that they have a clear vision of the future for cord-cutters.

The Boxee TV attempts to address a large void in the TV segment: DVRs for cord cutters and casual cable subscribers. The D-Link-made set-top box can pull in over-the-air HDTV signals and unencrypted cable signals. The dual tuner setup also allows it to record two channels at once. Built off the lessons learned with the Boxee Box’s Live TV dongle, the Boxee TV includes every feature found in a traditional DVR. Best of all, like TiVo, it’s not tied to the cable provider and even works with over-the-air signals. But, also like TiVo, there is a monthly charge to use the cloud DVR of $14.99 a month. Yeah, that’s a lot.

TechCrunch

With XBMC adding Raspberry Pi support, there has never been a better time for DIYers to try their hand at building their own SoC-based HTPC/extender. How fortunate then that the diminutive hardware kit continues to improve. The Rasperry Pi is available as a Model A or Model B variant with 128MB and 256MB of RAM respectively. With RAM prices in freefall, it should not be too surprising that the first hardware refresh would come with more memory, and sure enough the Model A and Model B variants are both shipping with twice as much memory as they originally did, jumping to 256MB and 512MB. The best part is that the new units not only retain their original names, but also their original price tags. The B model has been especially popular for digital media applications and having twice the RAM should help provide a bit more performance for particualrly heavy applications.

Answering to the cries of tinkerers worldwide, the Raspberry Pi foundation today announced you’ll be able to get their credit card sized computer with double the amount of RAM. But rather than launching a new and more expensive model they’ll just tweak the current one and keep the $35 price tag.

Techspot

It is no secret that October tends to be a big month for those interested in technology. With companies gearing up for the holiday shopping season and jockeying to one-up the competition in pursuit of the dollars destined to stream out of our wallets, October tends to be a poor month to take a vacation if you spend your free time writing about technology. Alas, I do not control my vacation time, so here in one neat package I present one of our infrequent roundups, recapping in no particular order, some of the more important and interesting stories of the last week worth keeping an eye on.

Netflix Promises More Captions and Delivers on Windows 8

Media streaming services have gradually been adding closed captioning to their video content, and though few, if any companies can yet boast of having closed captioning for all content across all platforms, Netflix has come under particular scrutiny for its lack of comprehensive closed captioning support. Such are the travails when one is the 800lb. gorilla of the streaming media market. The National Association for the Deaf filed suit against Netflix over the issue and the company recently settled with NAD, promising to offer closed captions for all of its content by 2014. The cynic in me might want to focus on how it took a lawsuit to get Netflix to commit, but it should be interesting to watch other services scramble to match Netflix's new "feature".

The company has also agreed to speedily caption new content. The agreement says that Netflix will put captions on new content within 30 days by 2014; within 14 days by 2015; and within 7 days by 2016, "and shall strive to reach a point at which Conforming Captions are provided simultaneously with launch at all times."

Ars Technica

While Netflix's legal team was busy avoiding court time, Netflix's development team was courting the limelight with the release of their Windows 8 app. Windows 8 may still be a few weeks from public availability, but anyone running a final release version of Windows 8 can download the app for free from the Windows Marketplace. The Netflix team has obviously expended a great deal of effort tapping into the new Windows UI, striving to deliver a rich app that conforms to Microsoft's vision of app design for Windows 8 while remaining a distinctive Netflix experience. Unfortunately, the app also delivered a crushing blow to my hopes of using the new Windows 8 interface for an HTPC in the same manner that I have for past versions of Windows. Certain sections of the Netflix app are only accessible through touch or mouse control, rendering it impossible to fully utilize the app with a standard remote control.

The company behind the app seem extremely proud of their achievements with this Windows 8 app and are making it known that a lot of engineering and development work has gone into building the application from the ground up to give the maximum possible experience to users and to fall in line with the design fundamentals of Windows 8. The app affords users the ability to quickly browse through recommended media in the form of movies and television shows by making great use of the supported gestures in Windows 8.

Redmond Pie

Boxee TV Leaked

Next up we have the leaked details of the upcoming Boxee TV. The Boxee Box is coming up on its second birthday, so the possibility of a hardware refresh is certainly not surprising, but it sounds like the Boxee team has some big plans for the second generation of hardware. In addition to adopting a more mainstream form factor, the Boxee TV is expected to integrate the TV tuner that was previoulsy offered as an external dongle in the form of the Boxee Box Live TV add-on and also offer the DVR capabilities that left many wondering about the value of the Boxee Box Live TV. How close to release is the new Boxee TV? We know that Boxee has been ramping up their beta testing program, and anecdotally, a recent visit to the local Best Buy reveled the Boxee Box on clearance for a hefty 30% discount, so I suspect we won't have long to wait.

To make that live TV aspect more enticing, Boxee has thrown in DVR capabilities. Our tipster hasn't had an opportunity to give recording a run-through, but a survey delivered to beta participants hints that you'll be able to watch content across multiple devices — likely through Boxee's companion smartphone app.

The Verge